


as the rush comes / the room between / the odd number

by vinylroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, F/M, jess survives the fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:17:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinylroad/pseuds/vinylroad
Summary: Dean wonders what his father would think of Jess, sitting in the backseat of the impala, steadily reading through his journal.  Her small finger tracing the outline of a succubus.It’s a ritual for him.What would dad think?  What would dad say?And in the back of his mind, he can hear his father say,She looks just like Mary.
Relationships: Jessica Moore/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Importing all my livejournal works. First posted to Livejournal as three separate works on June 28th, July 5th, and July 14th 2007. This has not been edited so I'm sorry about the shitton of grammar errors I made twelve and a half years ago.

Dean’s memories are in details. He doesn’t remember half of what people say or what happens to him, but he can remember the most inconsequential shit ever. Like people who can’t remember anniversaries or birthdays, but can remember the half-time score of a Patriots vs. Cowboys game in ’87. He doesn’t remember what his father said to him after Sam left, just that he was wearing Sam’s _Hell is for Children_ t-shirt and their room smelled like dill pickle potato chips.

He thinks he remembers his dad saying “gone”, but he could be making it up.

\--

He doesn’t really remember pulling Jess down from the ceiling in Sam’s apartment, but he can still smell her flesh burning when he looks at her, even through the vanilla scent of her body spray.

\--

Dean wonders what his father would think of Jess, sitting in the backseat of the impala, steadily reading through his journal. Her small finger tracing the outline of a succubus.

It’s a ritual for him. _What would dad think? What would dad say?_

And in the back of his mind, he can hear his father say, s_he looks just like Mary._

\--

The fire leaves a sliver of skin along her back burned and scarred. When she first goes on the road with them (_I’m not leaving her behind this time Dean. I just… can’t_), she wears long sleeved shirts that cover up all the evidence of that sticky Palo Alto night when her allegiance to the Winchesters was burned into her flesh.

She spends the first hundred miles twisting her fingers in the ends of her hair. Dean wonders if it’s like losing a limb - if there’s phantom pain. If she runs her fingers through her hair each morning, expecting more… forgetting that most of it is gone.

\--

The night she’s released from the hospital, Sam takes her back to the hotel room that they had been staying in since the fire. She disappears into the bathroom with her bag as soon as he unlocks the door and lets her inside.

_Probably wants to take a shower_ he says, gripping Sam’s neck, trying to kneed out the weeks of worry, pain and anguish he’s locked away at the peak of his spine. He finally convinces Sam to step away from the bathroom door and lie down beside him on the bed.

He thinks he hears her crying, but he just turns up volume on the episode of _Three’s Company_ so Sam doesn’t hear it.

A half hour later, she comes out, scissors in hand. Her long hair, two thirds eaten to crispy frizzy blackness by the heat and flames that destroyed her former life, is gone.

The last time Dean saw his brother look this sick was when the doctor came into see them about three hours after Jess had been rushed into surgery. Dean being Dean, he can’t remember exactly what the doctor said, only the rushing of burning words._ Cut deep. Womb. Survive. Infertile._

Her eyes are red, like she’s used the scissors to gouge at them. Her hair is chunky, cut with angry imprecision. Grabbed with fists, hacked with scissors. Hair that used to fall down her shoulders and along her back in gold curls.

Sam takes the scissors from her, sits on the ugly green bedspread and coaxes her to sit between his legs. He runs his fingers through her hair delicately, perhaps his own little way of saying sorry, an offer of appeasement to a sorrowful god.

Then he starts to cut. A little care to temper the anger. Little strands of gold that fall to the ugly grey carpet. By the time he’s done, her hair falls lightly on her shoulders. All the black is gone, save one group of strands near her ear that had burned all the way to her scalp, like the fuse to a firecracker. When he tries to cut it, she grabs his hands.

_Leave it._

And Sam does.

When Dean asks her later why she did it, she shrugs and stares into the distance.

_It’s like a bandaid – it’s better if you just pull it off quick._

\--

Dean is surprised how fast she learns how to shoot a gun. _Faster than Sammy; a natural_. When she pulls the trigger, he wonders if she’s practicing for something with yellow eyes.

\--

When they start staying in motels, Jess wakes up early and sneak into the bathroom to change. One morning, before the sun begins to crack the night sky, he wakes to the sound of rustling. His reflexes scream for him to jump out bed and tackle the intruder, but instead, he shifts his head quietly. He watches Jess dig through her clothes, picking out a thin cotton long sleeve shirt and a pair of worn jeans.  
  
She changes with the bathroom door open, lights off - the angry orange tinted light from the streetlamps outside pouring into the room the only light in the otherwise black room. When she strips off her shirt, he tells himself _WRONG. This is so WRONG_, but continues to watch nonetheless. She’s got her back to him, but he can still see the subtle curve of her breast, heavy and soft.

When she turns a little more, the light hits her scar and something in his throat twists. And he knows why she changes in the sleepy darkness.

\--

Although Sam has all the skills of a field medic, when it comes to stitching up wounds, Jess is the most talented of the three. Dean credits her hands – small and delicate. _Don’t pout Sam, big hands are useful for other things_, she says without smiling, but with a wink. The first joke in six weeks.

Although she had never liked the sight of blood and cared for it even less after the fire, Dean thinks she has gotten used to its red stickiness on her fingers.

So when she crawls behind him on the bed while Sam is in the shower, spreading her legs so Dean is wrapped between them, he wonders if her mother knew when she was teaching her how to cross-stitch and hem that one day she’d be sinking a needle into flesh.

_Probably not._

\--

Soon, they fall into a rhythm; Jess in the back, Sam riding shotgun. Gone are the long sleeve shirts and the sweaters in the hot, sticky last days of summer, replaced by tank tops and t-shirts.

He shoots quick glances in the rearview mirror when he can. He likes Kansas; it’s flat and he can drive for hours without making a single turn. So plenty of time to watch her in the backseat, lying propped up, finger tracing the scar across her abdomen. _Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth._

He doesn’t understand why he feels so utterly _guilty_.

\--

When Sam’s sleeping, he asks her why. Not that he minds the curve of her uncover shoulders, but he’s always been a curious one. She’s sitting at the small round table with the oddly-shaped, 70s style lamp, reading a book on fire demons with Bewitched playing softly on the tv in the background.

She doesn’t really answer, just gives a cryptic half-smile and twirls the black strands of hair around her finger. He flinches slightly when she reaches over and runs her finger over one of his scars, a slice in his shoulder from an angry poltergeist that his father stitched up for him.

_I get it now. I belong._

And he gets it.

And they’re words that Dean doesn’t forget.

\--

When they pull into Medina, just south of San Antonio, she’s smiling again. He knows that it probably has something to with the low moans that he heard drifting out of their motel room the night before.

_At least they had the decency to wait until I left._

For months, she had scuttled from Sam’s touch, avoiding fingers and palms, like a touch would split her down the center. Like she was a cracked piece of china, trying not to break apart completely. Sam had given her distance, frantically jacking off in the shower or in their hotel room when he thought no one was around.

But now. Now, they’re back. Back to how it was at Stanford. Smiling, fucking, cuddling. He wonders how long it’s been happening, because something tells him that it isn’t the first time. Just the first time he caught them.

He imagines Sam touching her, his fingertips underneath the soft skin under her ripe breast. Running along her scars.

They check in and Dean heads for the nearest bar.

\--

He _really_ hates this bartender. Most bartenders are smart enough to keep their mouths _shut_ when people come in alone to get drunk. This asshole won’t stop jammering on about shit that Dean couldn’t give a fuck about. Normally, he’d tell him to fuck off, but he doesn’t want to take the chance that he’ll cut him off, and if there’s a night that Dean Winchester needs to get fucked up, tonight is the night.

When he hears a familiar low grumble, he feels like smashing his head off the bar. Why the fuck had they chosen tonight to join him on his bar run?

_Hey_, she says softly in his ear as she leans over him, her breast rubbing against his shoulder. Sam smacks his brother’s back, says something about the music sucking and walks over to the jukebox. Jess gives his shoulder a squeeze and follows Sam.

_Who’s that?_

Fucking bartender.

_Brother. We’re on a family trip. So can I get another shot or what?_

When the bartender turns around to pour him another shot of Irish whiskey, he turns his head enough to see Jess and Sam fighting playfully at the jukebox, Jess punching him lightly on the shoulder when he says something disparaging about REO Speedwagon. Playfully bantering, at total ease with one another.

_Your sister’s hot, dude._

Dean doesn’t correct him.

\--

When they get back to the motel room, all three are completely drunk. Jess and Sam fall into their bed, Sam groaning something about how tequila and whiskey don’t mix and Jess calling him a fucking idiot.

Dean just passes out face down in the mattress of his bed, grateful for silence.

When he comes to, all he can hear are his brother’s moans and angry hisses from Jess to keep it down. When he finally pries his eyelids open, he can see Sam and Jess out of his left eye. Sam’s on top of her, pushing himself in and out, grunting as he sinks deeper inside her, inside her broken womb. Her hands rip at his hair, yanking him down for a kiss when he gets too loud. He can hear the sound of their sweaty bodies hitting. When Sam leans down to run his tongue along the scar on her abdomen, Dean sucks in air hard.

Then Jess turns her head and sees his open eyes.

He’s going to vomit. Right there. From the alcohol, from the shame, from the want. All he can smell is dill pickle. Overwhelming. Nauseating.

_Sorry_, he hisses, ripping his sheets off, grabbing a pillow and _bolting_ out of the motel room, slamming the door behind him.

  
  
\--

He’s in his car for almost two hours before he hears the rusty metal hinges of the screen door scream as the door opens.

Jess? He squeaks as she opens the door and climbs into the backseat with him.

_I will never really understand you Winchesters_, she sighs, climbing on top of him, nestling her head under his chin as she flattens her lithe body against his. She slides to the side slightly, her body curved around his, protected between the heat of his body and the sticky backrest of the seat. And inside, where little bells and whistles go off chanting Sam’s girl, Sam’s girl, Sam’s girl, he can’t help making excuses for himself. When he knows he shouldn’t.

_Don’t you **get it**?_ she hisses.

And when she takes his hand and shoves it down her shorts, into her panties and against her wet heat, he feels like crying. He isn’t sure if it’s relief or terror.

There isn’t much talking as he slides his fingers into her, just the sound of the crickets in the Texan heat and the small sounds she’s making with her open mouth. _Ooh _and _Uhh_.

She whines in displeasure when he slides his fingers out of her, but he moves quickly, pulling her on top of him. Her legs straddling his waist as he repositions his hand in her snug shorts, this time snaking up from below, fingertips trailing along her thigh. She pulls off her shirt, and he can see the long scar on her abdomen. Her breasts sway, heavy and soft. He reaches up with his free hand cupping her head with his hand, his thumb heavy and coarse on her apple smooth flesh. When she starts squeezing her legs together, forcing air from his lungs from the sheer pressure on his sides, he rips at the tie on the front of her small shorts.

_Please. _

He’s finally inside her, deep, pushing hard, making her moan so hard that she hiccups air in when he thrusts his hips hard up against her pelvis. She cries out, reaching down to his shoulders to steady herself. Closes her eyes and tips her chin forward, digging her nails into his shoulders so hard he thinks she’s going to freshly open old scars.

She leans down and kisses him for the first time, trying not to crush his face as she steadies herself against his strokes, which move faster and faster – greedy and wanton. She tastes like something ridiculously sweet. And she tastes like Sam. And John. And Mary. Family.

When he runs his fingers down the scar on her back, she comes, white heat running down her spine so hard that she feels like she’s on fire again. And just like the first time, Dean Winchester is there to pull her down.

\--

The only thing Dean Winchester isn’t an expert on is how to small talk with your brother’s girlfriend after you’ve fucked her in the backseat of your car. So he’s grateful when she just breathes, head against his chest, the soft hum of her breath reverberating in the hollow of his lungs.

Just as he thinks she’s asleep, she shifts on his body, sighing softly.

Sam makes me feel loved. You make me feel safe.

When she feels him turning his head away, she grabs the spiky hair at the top of his head and turns his face back so she can look up at him.

We’re not going anywhere. I’m in this - I mean it.

And when he looks at her, she doesn’t smell like burning flesh, only of vanillaandSamandDean.

She doesn’t tell him that Sam had been the one to suggest this and he doesn’t tell her that he would have done it either way.

\--

The next day, Dean eats an entire bag of dill pickle potato chips.


	2. Chapter 2

  
Sam fucks her like an apology.   
  
Soft, quiet. His hips smacking against her pelvis, thighs, ass… a sweaty, salty echo of  _sorry, sorry, sorry_ .   
  
The first time they fuck after the fire is the first time Jess doesn’t come. Sam has always been a bedroom boy scout -  _ladies come first_ , he would say with a devilish wink – but he’s so worked up, so tense that he comes in two strokes. He cries right after, leaving little wet spots on the pillow.   
  
After he falls asleep, she sinks her fingers into herself, hot and juicy. She thinks about Sam crying and she comes so hard her free arm flails and knocks the lamp off the bedside table.

  
  
\--   
  


  
Sam fucks her with a condom, pretending that it makes a difference. That his come will do anything other than make her feel warm and oozy inside. Like if he wears one, she won’t remember that she’ll never have children, or grandchildren, that her womb isn’t damaged, that  _she’s_ not damaged.   
  
  
Sam always did like roleplaying.

  
  
\--

  
  
After the first few frenzied fucks, he suddenly becomes docile, gentle. Like he has screwed the anger, frustration and fear out. Especially after the night he casually mentions that she could  _go to Dean_ after they’ve had sex and Dean’s fled to the impala. He’s never been particularly possessive, especially when it comes to his brother, but after that night and all the nights after, when he knows she has been filled by his brother, his sex takes on a new tone.   
  
_Pick me. Please pick me._

  
  
\--

  
  
When she is with Sam, she thinks of Stanford. Before the fire, before the truth about his family. When his body wasn’t raked with fresh scars, only faded lines of a past he wouldn’t share. She remembers lazy Saturdays, lying on their stomachs in bed, eating fruit loops and watching ridiculous cartoons; him stealing her bowl to drink the leftover milk and her thumping her wet spoon on his forehead, leaving a sugary, milky spot behind. Leaning up to lick it off, a swift journey to his lips for a quick kiss.   
  
She wonders if he thinks about it too. If when he closes his eyes as he comes, he’s back in their apartment in Palo Alto.   
  
She wants to be there with him.   
  
But she was never good at pretending.

  
  
\--

  
  
She stops buying the vanilla body spray that Sam loves so much. Instead, she starts sneaking little squirts of Dean’s cologne or using his deodorant when he isn’t looking. She loves his musky smell, the way that she loved the musky lavender smell of her grandmother’s old couch when she was a girl. The smell of being safe and surrounded.  
  
One night, when Sam is inside her, protected from her damage by latex, he drops his head beside hers.  
  
_Stop. Please don’t wear his cologne._  
  
And although he doesn’t say it, she knows what he wants to say next.  
  
_I feel like I’m fucking my brother._  
  
  
  
\--  
  
  
  
Dean fucks her like he’s begging.  
  
Hard, pleading._ Don’t leave, don’t take him, love me too._  
  
When she’s in the shower afterward, twisting her fingers between her legs to feel his stickiness running down her thighs, she wonders what Sam and his father did to make him so needy. To give him such an abandonment complex.  
  
So when he’s fucking her hard, bent over the fake pine table in their hotel room… or against the dresser, or in the shower… when he’s right there, ready to explode, she always says it.  
  
_I’ll stay._  
  
It’s odd, because when she thinks about it, on the surface Dean is the least needy person she has ever met. He treats everything, other than his brother, with a cool sense of distance. _Don’t care. Do what you want. I can fuck, love, desire, and hate with no attachment whatsoever._  
  
Apparently Dean enjoys roleplaying as well.  
  


  
\--

  
  
He fucks her bare, without a condom. Like  _you’re broken. It’s ok, I am too_ . He’s not afraid to remind her of what she has lost. Not because he’s cruel or doesn’t care, but because he knows what it’s like to be broken over and over. What it’s like to be patched up.   
  
And when he’s inside her, she feels like she’s being glued back together.

  
  
\--

  
  
He fucks her even harder when she starts wearing  _Sam’s_ cologne. She’s too afraid of the answer to ask why.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam thinks that, in some ways, it was so much simpler when it was two. Even number, round and easy. 

Odd numbers are harder. Sharp, like the corners of a triangle. Three’s a crowd, not company.

_Two_. Sam and Dean on the road before Stanford. Left behind in motels while their father saved other families in some attempt at cosmic penance for not saving his own. 

_Two_. Sam and Jess. Stanford. Two toothbrushes on the bathroom sink, two pairs of slippers under the bed.

_Three_. Sam, Jess and Dean. After Stanford, after the fire. One bed of tangled limbs, one half-empty.

Sam is afraid he will become _One_.

  
\--

  
Sam knows that he started this; that he is _responsible_ for whatever happens. He doesn’t think that makes it any easier to accept.

_**He** saved her while you watched her burn, after you lied to her for a year and a half. You asshole._

_She’s gonna pick him, She’s gonna pick him._

Sam Winchester is a masochist.

  
\--

  
_Jesus_, she says the first time she really gets a look at his scars. He knows she’s thinking what everyone thinks – _abused child_. It’s one of the reasons he almost never goes shirtless at the beach, instead hiding himself under layers of baggy t-shirts and itchy sweaters. He’s been topless in front of three other women, but for some reason, she feels like his first. Hard eyes, questions, lies.

He reaches down to grab his shirt from the ugly grey carpeted floor in her dorm room, embarrassed and heated. His hard-on is slowly dying and part of him wishes he could die right along with it. He jumps when she puts her hand on his bare bicep, stopping him. Instead of the cooing and sad eyes to which he has become accustomed, she cracks a smile, turns around, pulls down her pants and shows him a small scar on her left ass cheek. It looks like a crinkled _x_.

_Got a mole removed. Only scar I’ve got. Sexy, huh?_ She wiggles her ass and smacks it with an open palm, a loud crack echoing off the walls.

Later, after they’re spent and naked under the peach bedspread, she nips at his collarbone and gives him a devilish smile. 

_Such a damn shame,_ she says_, I would have fucked you a lot sooner if I knew what you were hiding under those baggy shirts._

He smiles back, dipping his head under the covers, hands on her ass, licking the little scar.

\--

A few weeks later, they’re sitting outside the library, heads buried in books; Kafka for him, Foucault for her. She loves reading here, the giant magnolia trees full and fragrant, the white petals of their blossoms littering the grassy knolls; says she feels like she’s in a Tennessee Williams’ play and he calls her Blanche. She’s wearing a white sundress and he’s struck by how soft she looks, even with her unshaved legs and grass-stained knees.

_Do you believe in destiny?_

She raises an eyebrow, followed by the left corner of her lips. _No more philosophy for you_, she says, crawling over to him on her hands and knees, yanking the book from his fingers. _Kafka is evil, Sam_.

_No, seriously._

_No._ She answers with a shrug, sitting back on her heels.

_No?_

_Noooooooo_, she says long and deep, like he’s slow and she has to spell it out for him. She grabs his shoulders, pulls herself up off the ground and plops down in his lap. _I think I like the idea of choice too much to really believe in destiny. But if it makes you feel better, sure, I believe in destiny. Ooga Booga, a tree falls in the woods and a butterfly farts and tada**,** I’m here with you. You’re totally the butterfly fart, by the way._

He chuckles, rich and easy, running his hands up her thighs.

_And I’ve got a secret,_ she says, leaning her mouth closer to his ear, laughing lightly at his hiss when she reaches inside his button-up shirt to pinch a nipple,_ I know what your destiny is, Sam Winchester…_

\--

  
Jess _was_ everything Sam _wanted_.

She was beautiful and carefree. She’d eat pancakes for dinner, pouring on extra syrup and stuffing her face until her belly was swollen and distended. She’d burp loudly and rub it, asking him, _Would you still love me if I was fat?_ and he’d laugh and say _Yes_.

They’d eat overripe peaches on the couch, leave their pits on the coffee table for days, a silent battle of wills to see who would crack first and throw them away. Sam always did.

When they’d fuck in the living room on Wednesday mornings with the curtains _wide_ open. When she’d smack his bare ass and ask, _Is that all you’ve got?_

Then he tainted her, turned her into a Winchester. Let the darkness that haunted him bleed into her. 

He wants Jess to be able to have a normal life. He wants her to have children and grandchildren. He wants her to eat pancakes for dinner and read Foucault under magnolia trees. But he _wanted_ her and now she’ll never have any of it.

_He_ broke her. He is _responsible_. A woman loved by Sam Winchester is a woman destined to die before her time. And he’s only starting to realize that like his mother, Jess died in the fire; that even though she sleeps beside him at night, twining her calves with his, this isn’t Jessica Moore. This is someone else; someone with Jess’s face, Dean’s will and Sam’s guilt. This is Jess Winchester.

And if it’s possible, Sam thinks he wants her even more _now._

Because Sam Winchester is a _selfish fuck._

\--

  
He hates how they suddenly have their own language, their own secrets. How she giggles when Dean pours too much ketchup on his eggs, the same giggle she used to give him when he hit his head on the bathroom doorway in their apartment in Palo Alto, forgetting that he needed to duck.

But most of all, he hates that he resents his brother. They have never really fought over anything before, never resented the other on presence alone. Sure, they’ve bickered over insignificant shit, like who chose the music in the car or who got the last piece of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, but there has never been jealousy, because what belongs to Sam belongs to Dean.

But Jess isn’t a pair of jeans, she isn’t a Metallica CD. They can’t trade her off like they bought her at some backwater bazaar in Louisiana. So now they’re at each other’s throats all the time; no _real _fighting, but the playful banter is gone, replaced with sarcasm and snide remarks. Angry glances and heavy footsteps. 

He would give his brother anything in the world, but there are some things that just can’t be given.

And he realizes that Jess is _his_ attempt at cosmic penance. Because deep down, he is incapable of giving his brother what he really wants, incapable of replacing what he stole from him; that Jess can give Dean something that Sam is unable to give, that he can’t even reach - that she can fix what he broke.

Sam wishes he could believe in destiny because he thinks it’s easier than living with choice.

  
\--

  
One night, after they’ve fucked slow and lazy, Sam curled against her, thrusting into her from behind, he asks her. She’s on her side facing the empty bed near the motel door and he wonders if she wishes Dean were there. He’s long gone, drunk on cheap whiskey and bitterness. He never stays when it’s Sam’s night - just comes back at dawn, dishevelled and sore, locking himself in the bathroom until it’s time to hit the road.

Sam reaches out a hand to run along her spine and for the first time, really _touches _the long scar on her back, the tortured flesh reminding him of his own selfishness.

_Do… do you love him more?_ He asks her quietly, so softly he doesn’t really expect her to hear or answer. When itchy silence is his only reply, he’s not sure whether he’s relieved or disappointed.

_Do you?_ She asks, breaking the silence without moving, just the sound of her ribcage expanding and contracting, air going in and coming out. 

_Hmm? Do I what?_

_Love him more?_

No one gets an answer that night.

  
\--

  
When Dean comes back the next morning, everything falls apart.

He looks so rough that even Sam can feel the copious amount of tequila he must have ingested swirling at the bottom of his stomach. His eyes are painfully red, practically screaming, and his face looks like it took a pounding; he’s got a nasty cut razoring down over the apple of his cheek and his lower lip is swollen in the right corner. But worst of all, he smells like sex. Like _bent over the dirty bathroom sink_; like _up against the wall outside_; like _angryangrypleaseletmeforget_ sex.

And Jess can smell it too.

And she looks _hurt_; like he walked in and punched her in the face.

Jess walks out and doesn’t come back for two days.

  
\--

  
Dean self-destructs. It’s so bad that for a brief moment Sam considers hiding the knives and guns, then chastises himself for thinking Dean would ever do something that stupid. 

But when Dean asks Sam to _get the fuck out_, he waits by the door just in case. All he hears are sobs and vomit hitting white porcelain.

Dean just turns in on himself, curling into a little ball of bitter and remorse. He eats only what Sam practically shoves down his throat and sleeps all day while Sam is out searching for Jess. Sam has never seen him like this, _never_. His face twists in pain the same way it does when he hears someone say _Mary_.

The second night, Sam climbs into bed with Dean, holds him like he used to when they were kids. He’s surprised at how natural it feels; even with their newfound muscles and sharp angles, it’s still soft and comforting. Waves of regret wash over Sam for all the times he could have invited Dean down to California, called him to talk about courses or girls, bothered him with questions about transmissions and spark plugs.

That night, Dean finally tells him what he’s been holding onto. All the secrets bottled for four years, pressing into his skull.

At the end, he just says, _She doesn’t need me the way she needs you._

More than anything, Sam is suddenly struck by the realization that _Two_ no longer works.

\--

  
When Jess comes back, she doesn’t say a word about where she’s been. She just walks into the room, says, _Let’s go – it’s six hours to Topeka._

\--

  
She stops sleeping with them. Not just _sex_, but sleep; curls up into a motel chair or in the corner of the room with a pillow or a towel. Doesn’t like it when they touch her; she has pulled on her rusty armour.

She refuses any offer of a bed, a stern glance when Sam tries to strong-arm her into taking one of the double beds with the ugly purple comforters. She doesn’t even take it when he sleeps on the floor with her, keeping his distance, but close enough to hear her breath slow as she begins to dream.

She always looks so sore, her body bent from uncomfortable positions and unforgiving floors. She doesn’t look angry, only scared. Sam isn’t sure which is worse.

Although the logical part of his brain tries to explain that she’s punishing them for Dean’s mistake, Sam thinks that it feels like she’s punishing herself. He just doesn’t why.

He knows that something is going to break – crack open and give in.

And it does.

  
\--

  
The hunt in Ft. Lauderdale goes horribly wrong. 

She’s in the backseat with Dean, bleeding all over the impala’s interior. Sam’s foot is down on the accelerator so hard he feels like he’s going to put his foot right through the floor of the impala. Her sticky blood is all over his hands, making the steering slick with red.

Dean’s _screaming_ in the backseat, his hand in Jess’s sliced shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding.

_Jess Jess Jess Jesus Jess._

The sound makes Sam smell fire and smoke.

  
\--

  
They take turns watching her. One takes the second bed, the other takes the chair beside hers.

The wound in her shoulder isn’t as deep as it should be, considering all the blood. Sam manages to close it with fifteen stitches. _She’s gonna have a nasty scar,_ he thinks. _Another one._

They both want to take her to a hospital, but she begs them not to.

_Please,_ she says,_ I can’t go back there. ** Please**._

So instead, she lies on a cheap motel bed, her first in more than a month. 

The first night, she runs a vicious fever, so they fill the bathtub with cold water and a few buckets from the ice machine for good measure. She cries when they lift her into the tub, so Sam climbs in behind her, holding her as his teeth start to chatter. Their clothes stick to their bodies, little icebergs floating around them.

The second night, Dean goes out and gets them some food; they have been living off the contents of the vending machine down the hall for a day and a half. He feeds Jess her favourite, lemon meringue pie, by hand. When she falls asleep, he runs his finger through her curls, licking the last of the lemon off the fork.

The third night, Sam wakes up to Dean’s quiet whispers. He peers through the hazy darkness and sees Dean on the bed, between Jess’s legs, his head cradled in her lap, his cheek against her bare abdomen. She’s running her hands through his hair softly, her arm still a little stiff and swollen. 

He thinks he hears, _I’m sorry. I’m sorry_.

And then, _I love you_.

He wants to keep watching, but he feels guilty; that he’s an unwelcome guest in a private moment, a dirty voyeur. So he closes his eyes and falls back asleep. And the sleep comes easily.

The fourth night, Sam wakes up and finds Jess staring back at him, lying beside him on the bed. She has a bit of bedhead - her curls are scattered around her head like thick strands of twined cotton. She gives him a content smile and he feels light-headed. Like he’s back under the magnolia trees, eating pancakes; back in the apartment eating fruit loops and watching The Smurfs. She’s soft again, grass-stained knees and unshaved legs.

And when he sees Dean’s hand snake over her side and grab his hand, he sudden feels ridiculously _full._

  
\--

  
Jess is the one that starts it this time.

Dean’s got his hands on her hips when she leans over to kiss Sam, pulling him down to her. He relents, closing the gap between them, pushing her back until she is flush against Dean. They both push in, creating delicious pressure between them, falling into Jess’s warm, soft pliant flesh.

Dean turns her gently so that he can kiss her. She laughs softly, gripping his soft, spiky hair and licking at his lips. She leans back against Sam, letting his arms slide around her waist as her ass thrusts against his crotch, rubbing and teasing.

She’s still kissing Dean when he reaches his hand down into her panties and finds Sam’s fingers already in there, playing with her. His mouth breaks from hers and he lets out a gasp that sounds more like a groan. Their fingers tangle together, rubbing her, fingertips brushing lewdly against one another. One set rubbing while another set slip inside.

She squeezes her eyes shut as Dean and Sam’s heads fall towards each other over her small frame, resting their foreheads together, breathing each other’s air as their fingers dance together inside her. Sam thinks he smells peaches on Dean’s breath.

_God, good girl. Our girl... come on._

Dean is first. Gentle as Sam holds her up, his back to the wall, sucking on her neck as Dean thrusts into her, pushing her into Sam and Sam into the wall. Sam telling him to go harder as Jess whimpers and throws her head back, smacking it into his chest.

Sam is second. Slides through Dean’s stickiness into Jess. Bare. Slides _home_. Dean slipping his hand down to rub her, to play where she and Sam meet and slide.

Jess is third. Sam pulls out, spent and Dean drops to his knees. Pulls her to him, licks away the mess they left behind until she screams. Tastes _SamandDeanandJess_. Shares it with them in a kiss.

  
\--

  
The triangle, broken and sharp, changes into something else. A circle; round, unending. Safe. And Sam thinks he’s ok with _Three_.

Sam won’t tell her that it wasn’t the first time he shared a bed with his brother and she won’t tell him that she’s known all along.

Some things are just better left as secrets.


End file.
